Sigourney Weaver Sets the Record Straight on Her Scene with Costar Jack Champion in Avatar

Sigourney Weaver; Jack Champion.
Credit:

Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock; Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty

Key Information

• Avatar: Fire and Ash, the third installment in James Cameron’s sci-fi franchise, is currently playing in theaters.
• Sigourney Weaver portrays Kiri, a teenage Na’vi who shares a kiss with Jack Champion’s character, Spider.
• Weaver clarified in a recent interview that the scene did not involve an actual kiss.

In a recent interview, Sigourney Weaver addressed speculation surrounding her character’s romantic moment in the film Avatar: Fire and Ash, noting that she did not kiss her young co-star, Jack Champion, during filming.

The film, which is the latest addition to James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, features Weaver as Kiri, a Na’vi teenager and the adopted daughter of Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldaña, and Jake Sully, portrayed by Sam Worthington. This installment revisits the beloved world first introduced to audiences in 2009.

Weaver’s character shares a kiss with Spider, a human character played by 21-year-old Jack Champion, who filmed the previous installments between the ages of 14 and 16. Weaver explained, “We had to be very delicate about that scene because it included a kiss. Obviously I wasn’t going to kiss Jack, who was 14 or 15, in real life.”

Director James Cameron, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, and Sigourney Weaver on the set of “Avatar: Fire and Ash”.

Mark Fellman/20th Century Studios

Weaver, who has collaborated with Cameron for years, shared that they arranged for an appropriate stand-in for the kiss. “I asked Jack to pick someone I could kiss, and he did,” she recounted. “When I wasn’t there, they picked someone appropriate for Jack. That concern about all of that, which is quite legitimate, was going on.”

Reflecting on the scene, Weaver expressed satisfaction, stating, “I believed it. It’s so genuine between the two of them and any concern about Jack’s real age and my real age, I think there’s no room for it there.”

Sigourney Weaver and Jack Champion in “Avatar: Fire and Ash”.

Disney

Cameron noted that the creative decision to include a romantic element between Spider and Kiri reflects his own childhood experiences. “There was a lot of controversy creatively for us around whether Spider and Kiri should stay kind of brotherly-sisterly,” he explained. “I thought, no, let’s play that awkward young love thing where they don’t really know how to express it or confront it.”

He added, “I just love that image when she kisses him at the waterfall and she’s a head taller than him and has to kind of bend down.” Cameron compared it to his own middle school experiences, recalling that he found girls who were taller than him to be “very cool,” emphasizing that such dynamics can enrich storytelling.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is currently in theaters.